What Do You Think? How Leaders Can Recognize and Reverse Learned Helplessness on Their Teams
A few months ago, I was researching how to keep my business discoverable by AI. I was working across Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot to identify recommended steps.
I’d ask ChatGPT a question, read the response, and think, “That makes sense.” Then I’d ask a follow-up question and get an answer that contradicted the first one.
I’d switch to Claude and use the same prompts, only to get different answers. I started taking responses from one tool and putting them into another, asking it to analyze and critique them. Instead of clarity, I came away frustrated.
Each response seemed initially helpful. But when they started contradicting each other (and themselves), I realized I needed to step away.
Somewhere in the queries, I lost the most important one: What did I think?
***
Marty Seligman is best known for his work on positive psychology, but he also discovered that when people (or animals) feel they have no control over what happens to them, they begin to think, feel, and act as if they are helpless.
There’s a parable about a baby elephant tied to a post with a thick rope. It tries to break free, can’t, and eventually gives up. As it grows into a massive adult, it’s still tied to the same post and rope. Even though the elephant could easily snap it the rope, it doesn’t try, believing escape is impossible. It has developed learned helplessness.
Most of us have experienced versions of this at work.
The leader constantly changing priorities, making effort feel wasted.
The employee who stops offering honest feedback after it’s ignored or used against them.
Leaders who make decisions affecting their teams without asking and then act surprised when buy-in is low.
The individual who stops sharing good ideas after being repeatedly shut down.
The team that stops proposing solutions because their recommendations are always ignored.
The salesperson who stops tailoring their pitch because no one seems to notice the difference.
Over time, these experiences create confusion, frustration, and fatigue. You hear it in the phrases like:
Why bother, I couldn’t care less.
Someone else will decide anyway.
There’s no point in speaking up.
Sometimes, learned helplessness feels like dependence:
I’ll wait to see what leadership decides before forming an opinion.
Let’s get more data before we decide.
Let’s see what the AI comes up with and go from there.
None of those are bad questions. The problem comes when they aren’t paired with: What do I think? When you skip that question, you’re handing off your judgment and authority.
***
I’ve worked with CEOs who loved to ideate out loud, frequently sharing ideas across different challenges. The banter invigorated them. They’d set the people around them spinning with endless possibilities; but neglect to clarify they were brainstorming and not setting priorities.
Team members treated every idea as a new direction, trying to move everything forward at once. They got overwhelmed and stopped distinguishing between possibilities and priorities. Progress stalled, and frustration grew on all sides.
That’s what makes learned helplessness so difficult to catch. It doesn’t arrive in a crisis. There’s no obvious moment when someone decides to stop trusting their judgement. It's the one-on-one that used to surface hard truths and now covers only status updates. It's the team that still hits its numbers but hasn't generated a new idea in six months. Or the question that keeps getting escalated because no one believes their answer will stick.
Learned helplessness thrives when things appear to be working. The AI responses look good. The team is hitting its numbers. The product is shipping. It silently lurks, never announcing itself.
***
Recognize It
It’s hard to recognize something you’ve stopped questioning.
Consider the last time you:
Disagreed with a recommendation?
Sat with a hard problem before reaching for outside help?
Changed your mind because of your own reasoning, not because someone else convinced you?
On a team:
Watch for the slow disappearance of questions. Learned helplessness doesn't just affect effort; it impacts interest. When people stop believing their thinking changes outcomes, they stop being curious about them.
Are people bringing problems or solutions?
Are they sharing what they think, or what they believe you want to hear?
Do they go quiet when challenged, or do they push back with substance?
A team that has stopped challenging you is not a team that agrees with you. It's a team that has learned it doesn't matter.
Recover It
Once you recognize learned helplessness, begin rebuilding the connection between thinking and outcomes.
For individuals
Deliberately create space to think before reaching for a tool, a framework, or another person's opinion.
Write your thoughts before asking AI.
Ask team members to note their thinking before seeking consensus.
Find small ways to move forward under ambiguity rather than wait for certainty.
Notice where you've stopped trusting your own judgment and deliberately exercise it
For teams
Ask people to share recommendations and not just findings.
Share the desired outcomes and let teams define and own how they get there.
Publicly acknowledge when someone's thinking changed an outcome.
Let people wrestle with problems long enough to develop confidence in their own reasoning.
The goal is to instill confidence that individual judgment still matters.
Don’t Create It
As leaders, avoid the unintended actions that created learned helplessness:
Constantly rescuing people from difficult decisions teaches them they don't need to make them.
Asking for input after you've already made up your mind teaches that participation is performative.
Treating every mistake as a risk to eliminate teaches people that judgment is dangerous.
These come from a genuine desire to be helpful, maintain quality, or move fast. But the message is the same: your judgment doesn't need to be exercised here. Mine will do.
Reflect on this:
Do the people who work for you make more decisions this year than last or fewer?
Do they challenge you, or accommodate you?
Have you created a team, or an execution layer?
The people around you have untapped capability. The question is whether the culture gives them reasons to use that capability. Every time someone’s thinking changes an outcome, confidence grows. Every time judgement is ignored or deemed irrelevant, confidence shrinks.
People don't stop thinking because they can't. They stop when they've learned that thinking no longer matters.
Karen Eber is an author, TED and keynote speaker, and communication strategist who works with frontline leaders, senior executives, and C-suite teams at Fortune 500 companies. She specializes in breaking down the science of communication and decision making to influence outcomes. Karen partners with teams across sales, marketing, communications, HR, finance, operations, legal, and IT. She works across industries including healthcare, technology, financial services, manufacturing, energy, consumer goods, retail, professional services, education, and nonprofits — helping leaders turn complex information into clear, compelling stories that drive decisions and action. She is the author of The Perfect Story. Learn more about her keynotes and workshops at kareneber.com/speaking.
Summary:
This article explores how learned helplessness develops in leaders, teams, and individuals often without anyone noticing. Drawing on Marty Seligman's research, it examines how repeated experiences of ignored judgment, overridden decisions, and deferred thinking erode people's confidence in their own reasoning. The piece offers practical guidance for recognizing learned helplessness through behavioral signals, recovering it through deliberate practice, and avoiding the leadership habits that create it. Key concepts include: the difference between dependence and resignation, the danger of outsourcing judgment to data or AI, and why a team that has stopped challenging you is not a team that agrees with you.
